Two nameless characters in the 13th chapter of the first book of Kings
teaches us one of the saddest and yet most remarkable lessons we can
glean from the entire Bible, at least for those who feel called to be
servants or prophets of God. It's a very sobering lesson, and thus
should not be missing in this book, even if the men by whom it is
brought may be totally unknown to us.
It illustrates in another way
what I was trying to portray as the most significant lesson I glean
from the life of Solomon. It's that you don't have to accept everything
life hands you. In fact, sometimes you shouldn't.
I'm not going to retell the
story, since you can read the chapter for yourself. Probably you'll
find that this is one of those stories after which you'll put your
fists to your sides, shake your head at God and say, "How could You be
so utterly unfair?" It took me a few decades until I finally got the
point that - as with all His other "atrocities," God also meant well
with us in teaching us a very important lesson, even if it cost the
younger prophet his life.
In my own life, the lesson has
taken on immense significance at one time or another, because - as is
the tricky point about this story - often those who come closest to
causing us to err from God's path are not our adversaries, nor the
people we don't like, but the folks we look up to.
The blatant lesson in this is
something God has told me personally over and over again. It's really
only 100% safe to rely on Him alone, and no one else. But as I said,
this only applies to those whom God has personally chosen to serve Him,
to whom He has spoken personally, and revealed His will. Most people
will need some kind of leader or shepherd to tell them what to do. But
if God has called you to be a prophet, you had better double-check with
Him everything even your "older prophets" tell you to do, just to make
sure that it's also what God wants for you!
When we look at established
religion today, and we wonder how in the world it could have ever
veered so far away from the path Jesus and His early disciples cut out
for us, a path in which they were personally led by the leading of His
Holy Spirit, which caused them to win sometimes thousands of converts
in a single day, all of whom "lived together and had all things in
common…" the dream of any Communist (see Acts 2:44, 45);
there were no church buildings in which they worshiped God, because
they knew that He doesn't live in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48, 49), but "ceased not to teach and preach daily in every house" (Acts 5:42)…
If we see the contrast between what is and what should be when it comes
to Christianity and the way it has been practiced for the past 16
centuries, then we may begin to get a glimpse of why that old lesson
was so serious.
If we would listen more to God
and His Word and what He has to tell us, in order to let others, be
they pastors, preachers, heads of churches, or men (and women) of
whatever title lead us astray from the path God clearly laid out for us
in His Word, then history, I'm sure, would have taken a different
course.
The more you get to know God's
people, the more you'll realize why He said, "My people are a peculiar
people." The modern common word for peculiar; I guess, would be
"weird." And there's a reason for it. God wants us to look at and rely
on Him, not people.
Most of us are fairly sociable
folks. We go by what other people do, and what they say or think about
us. We try to please people, and we aim at being respected by them. As
far as we're concerned, God has one big disadvantage in comparison to
our fellowmen: we can't see Him. So, it comes a lot more natural to us,
trying to please people (and sometimes bending over backwards in our
attempts to do so), whom we can see, rather than a God we cannot see.
The problem with that, and it's
a very common problem, is that we tend to make a god out of people:
their opinions of us, our status with them, etc., and it boils down to
having another "god" before Him; in fact, dozens, hundreds or even
thousands of them. And we know from the 10 Commandments that God won't
tolerate that.
It takes a strong man to buck
the tide of the general consensus, let alone to turn down a tempting
offer from an elder, solely based on a conviction to obey something
perhaps slightly controversial that God has shown him personally.
So, if you don't want to share
the younger prophet's pitiful fate and spiritually die and find
yourself torn apart by the brute beasts of this world, you had better
stick to whatever it is God has shown you and laid on your heart to do,
even if the whole world tells you something different, and that may
include even the leaders of your own congregation.
They may not deliberately lie
to you, as the old prophet in the story did, but they may nonetheless
tell you to do something which may not be God's personal will for you,
if you have been receiving his revelations of His will in your life.
One way to find out and make sure is to ask Him. The young man of God
could have stopped to pray, "Lord, is this older brother here telling
me the truth, or is it a test from You?" Especially when something
anyone tells you contradicts what God has already told you, there is no
degree to which you shouldn't go in order to double-check and make sure
that this is truly God's will and His voice.
